Arts & Culture

The New Jew Canon is a long-term project that seeks to canonize essential Jewish (and some Non-Jewish) reads as recommended by extraordinary rabbis, experts, and cultural leaders. Suggestions are welcome via comments or email. Title: The Women’s Bible Commentary, … Read More

The New Jew Canon is a long-term project that seeks to canonize essential Jewish (and some Non-Jewish) reads as recommended by extraordinary rabbis, experts, and cultural leaders. Suggestions are welcome via comments or email.

Three books seem to me particularly dependable. First, the Women’s Bible Commentary, (URJ Press 2007), offers high quality biblical and rabbinic scholarship, contemporary reflections, and poetry on the 54 portions of the Torah. Second, Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning (Beacon 2006 or scads of used paperback editions) always moves me with its belief that we become more truly human by making meaning from our sufferings. Third, I bring Gail Twersky Reimer and Judith Kates’s collection Beginning Anew (Simon & Schuster 1997) to shul with me every High Holidays to read during the boring parts, and I always find some insight that reminds me why I need to be there. Whether it's Aviva Gottlieb Zornberg's stellar essay on the death of Sarah and the binding of Isaac or Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi on "Brothers and Others" or Judith Plaskow on Leviticus 18, sexuality, and teshuva, Beginning Anew always offers some sustaining truth.

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Rachel Adler is Professor of Modern Jewish Thought at Hebrew Union College-Los Angeles and author of Engendering Judaism which won a National Jewish Book Award for Jewish Thought.

The New Jew Canon is a long-term project that seeks to canonize essential Jewish (and some Non-Jewish) reads as recommended by extraordinary rabbis, experts, and cultural leaders. Suggestions are welcome via comments or tips. For more New Jew Canon recommendations, visit Jewcy's New Jew Canon Listmania.